29 MAY 1909, Page 15

[To TRH EDITOR Or rap ersocAreityl Sm—The letter of "

E. M. L." and your article " Non- conformists and the Communion " in last Saturday's Spectator recall a personal experience which has for some years given me much mental pain. I am a communicant of the Established Church of Scotland, of which Church my father was for many years an elder ; but, my mother being an Episcopalian, the children worshipped about equally in both Churches. When University days were over and I settled in England my desire was to become a member of the Church of England ; but before presenting myself at the Cotntunnion- table I told the vicar, on his requesting me to become his warden, that I had not been confirmed ,by a Bishop. He withdrew his request and refused me Communion. I appealed to his Bishop—a well-known and broad-minded Bishop of a Northern diocese—who informed me that he could give no instruction to his clergy about the class you describe as "ready and desirous," and in effect gave me to understand that if I had presented mypelf no question would have been asked, but now that I had raised the point be could not help me. Disgust and disinterest have been the result, and is it to

be wondered at P—I am, Sir, &c., W. L.